With so much mystification around the process of improvisation, that remains an important lesson.Ī few years ago, I attended the Stanford Jazz Workshop-a week-long, all-ages summer 'camp.' That program is structured around the ideas of bebop pianist Barry Harris. One of the central messages of all his instructional materials is that anyone can learn to play the music. Press, 2002), the Aebersold approach has introduced many, many musicians to the music. For all its limitations, and there are problems with such a heavy focus on scales (see David Ake's discussion in Jazz Cultures, U.C. There is more to it than this, and the Aebersold world is also closely connected to legendary jazz educator David N. You derive the melodic material you want to play from a scale or set of scales.
In high school I was exposed to the Jamey Aebersold approach-basically a scale-chord method. None of the teachers I've had were dogmatic in their adherence to a particular methodology, but they did have preferences.
A student today has a surprisingly large number of approaches or methods to choose from. But the amount of pedagogical material has exploded in the past 20+ years. Instructional guides are not new-you can find books on how to play and improvise jazz going back to at least the 1920s. It has become 'institutionalized.' This has had an obvious impact on the way the music is taught. Jazz, as many other writers have pointed out, is increasingly taught in high schools and universities.
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